Of Underpaid Actors and Really Good Mascara
by scrawling purple ink
Summary: [Oneshot, Inu x Kag....sort of.] Follow Inuyasha and Kagome as they try and fail repeatedly to express their undying love for each other. Pokes fun at cliches. Rated T for the faux lime scene.


It was a quiet, peaceful night. An impossibly huge silvery moon lit up the sky, much like one of those decorative shiny balls you put on Christmas trees. (Elsewhere in the world, countries were being ripped to shreds by freak tsunamis and insanely high floodwaters and the like.) The birds were singing, the night was alive with passion and the sweet music of the…wait, wrong fandom.

It was completely romantic. Perfect for, say, a confession of undying love?

Ahem. Naraku had been defeated, Kikyou avenged, Kohaku revived, etc etc… Miroku and Sango were somewhere getting it on, Kaede and those pesky villagers were conveniently away curing somebody or something, and Shippo had mysteriously disappeared, as he usually does in fanfiction. Basically, all of the important primary characters (apart from Inuyasha and Kagome) that had made the series such a complex and fascinating web of emotion and action had vanished for the sake of the author's forwarding of blatant, cheaply written romance.

Inuyasha waited. Aaaany second now. This was the author's cue to get on with the cliché confession. Everyone else had had their happy ending. Even Naraku was probably having fun in hell. Dammit, why hadn't theirs just fallen into their lap already? It always did in other fanfiction…maybe this one was defective.

He sighed, feeling his will being manipulated. Late, but hey, he wasn't complaining. This routine got more painful every time. The silver haired, golden eyed, crimson clad, etc etc etc'ed hanyou turned around to face Kagome, the dark h—screw it. Anyway.

"Listen, uh…Kagome…I, uh…wanted to tell you…" _This is really getting annoying_…_why is it that in romantic fanfiction, I mysteriously become a bumbling moron who is easily confused by four letter words? I mean, I've displayed in the manga that I am capable of incredibly quick thinking and perceptiveness countless times…hmm…maybe that damn Kuro is mistranslating…_

Inuyasha had lost all powers of speech and was currently fumbling for something to say when Shippo was turned into a sad plot device for boosting the author's own motives rather than contributing to Inuyasha and Kagome's maturity as adults, as well as teaching them important lessons about being parents. Yep. At this particular moment, the irritatingly cute little fox cub had reappeared conveniently enough to interrupt the all important confession.

"Kagome, can I have chocolate? Can you buy me presents? Can you lavish your love and attention on me? Can you coo over my cuteness until Inuyasha explodes with jealousy so that you guys can argue, stalk off, fume, and return without having learned anything, thus taking that old dead routine and beating it with a stick till everyone's sick of hearing about it?" Wow, the kid sure had some lungs. Was that a speed of, what, two hundred words per minute? The girl in question began to feel lightheaded.

"Umm…right…"

And with that, Shippo vanished. He seems to have a talent for that.

She sighed.

"So, um…wanna give it another shot?" There was a tinge of desperation in her voice. Inuyasha couldn't blame her; this was the third time they'd tried. This particular author was beingmore repetitive than most. Probably trying for a couple more reviews at their expense, the scoundrel. _Alright, next time, I'm auditioning for Kagura…at least she gets put out of her misery before she can try any love confessions on Sess... Or maybe I'll just go for a nice, short manga where all this confession stuff is conveniently glossed over…_

"The moment's gone already. There would be no class to that," the hanyou argued. "We've spent over four hundred chapters, countless trees' worth of paper, and who knows how much ink skirting the subject. We may as well get it done _right_." He looked around, as though someone would pop out of the bushes at any moment. "Anyway…if we don't, think of the fans, Kag. They'll lynch us. In a second. You know how they are…"

"So much for loyalty…"

"That's show biz."

"I should've listened to my mom and become a doctor."

She turned.

"Wanna make out?" Kagome asked listlessly.

"What for?" he responded, curious.

"'Cause well, sometimes the authors—who are typically horny adolescent females—like for us to have wild sex and then let the angst come later. And, well, you are one pretty hot son of a bitch."

He grinned, baring impossibly white fangs. "Sure—!" His reply was muffled by Kagome's mouth. Fairly soon they were somehow on the floor, never stopping, and the pair were tugging at each other's clothing. How lascivious! How salacious! How delicious! Kinky forest floor sex!

Thunder rumbled and the sky was parted by hands attached to a hook nosed, oily haired, sneering face. Or, if you prefer, a large nosed, silken haired, elegantly smug face.

"Keep it PG-13," he growled. They blinked, and the sky was normal again.

Yay for allusions to other fandoms!

They hurriedly began to pull on their discarded clothing.

"That was weird," Kagome commented.

"We were just getting to the good part, too," Inuyasha whined. Suddenly the world stopped. The metaphorical strings tugged at his body as he became a puppet for the sadistic authoress, and he caught the time-traveling, short skirted, long haired, schoolgirl/miko's gaze and held it. His hands slid up to rest on her shoulders. At that moment, the sun peeked over the clouds—_How the hell did that happen? One second ago it was before midnight, and five minutes later it's **dawn**? Tch, more clichéd romantic props to add to the whole setting_—framing them in a halo of hazy golden light. It all seemed surreal, as though in a dream. The anticipation built up as the author laced the thing with purple prose and flowery descriptions…oh, the suspense! Inuyasha took a deep breath, and—

"Kagome, I lo—"

"Hi guys!" The words were slurred with sake, but the voice was unmistakable…Miroku. If looks could kill….the glares he was getting from the repetitively star-crossed lovers would have made him wish he were dead if wasn't too drunk to see clearly. Not that they were really surprised. This plot device was one of the more common ones.

"Why must this happen to us no matter what pairing we are?" She cast her gaze (as though her eyeballs were a fishing line) at the drunk monk. That rhymes.

"I always knew I should have stuck to being a lawyer. Mom always said that getting paid to argue would have been my dream job."

Sango giggled drunkenly and said, "Happens to us too—hee hee, stop it, Miroku—happens in every single fandom, ya know—"She burst into giggles, too intoxicated to realize that the slightly more lucid monk was delightedly feeling her up.

"But seriously, guys, we'll be leaving you now. There is an abandoned bush in the forest that is calling our name, eh Sango?" Miroku chimed in suggestively.

The irritable pair blinked simultaneously, and the slayer and the monk were gone. They turned to each other.

"I know! Let's go into deep descriptions of each other's eyes! Let's call them orbs! Let's describe them with as many romanticized synonyms for yellow and blue as possible!"

Kagome's soon-to-be-overly-described eyes lit up. "Genius!….okay, GO!"

Inuyasha leaned close to her, gazing into her spectacularly clear cobalt orbs…

Her breath caught in her throat as drowned in his endless pools of molten amber…

He got lost in her azure oceans, framed by impossibly long, thick, dark lashes…

Kagome was so close to his twin ochre golden suns…

The world had gone still, sitting on the edge of its proverbial seat. Even the little birds in the sky had frozen.

"Kagome…" the silver-haired (because, you know, it's required that you repeat his hair color at least three times per chapter) boy breathed.

Ah, the anticipation! The excitement!

"…yes?" _Get on with it already…_

He examined her eyelashes. "…you have some _really_ good mascara, you know?"

---

A/N: There we go. Uninspired, dry, not as good as it could have been, but there you go. A more experienced author could probably have pulled a parody like this off, but you'll have to settle for me. The idea for this struck me one long afternoon, and I had to write it out. I sort of got lost and probably lost interest around the middle, regaining it at the end, but it seems a bit choppy to me. This is affectionately dedicated to those cliché's we all use, like descriptions of eyes, prolonging confessions, etc. I read fanfics like that too, but c'mon, sometimes it does get a little mundane. Don't flame just cause I poked a little fun and it pissed you off, flame cause you think it sucked.


End file.
